Marathon as political metaphor

Runners get their inspiration from the craziest places. I got mine from a former president and a Dead Head.

A few years ago, I left journalism to work as a White House speechwriter for President George W. Bush. When I visited him in Dallas after he left office, we talked for well over an hour, discussing politics, raising daughters (I’ve got three) and running.

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He asked me for my previous personal best in a marathon, which at the time was 3:50, “Well,” he said, “your goal is to break 3:44.” Why’s that, Mr. President? “Because that’s the best I ever did — and you can beat that.”

Fair enough. I had, after all, been training for three months with Coach Mike Broderick. He was the Dead Head. Not your classic running coach.

First of all, he wasn’t a frustrated ex-jock. He was just a former lawyer who loved running and loved to help other runners.

The best thing about Broderick: He didn’t care if you were fast or slow. You got his attention either way. He developed a winter program for those fast enough to run the Boston Marathon, but opened it up to anyone with a spring marathon. That was me.

I presented a unique challenge. I was fast on the track. But in marathons, I fall apart. I trained terribly. I went out too fast, never put in the miles that I was supposed to, and never did any hill-work. I was undisciplined and constantly injured.

Broderick changed all that. He slowed me down, put me — and all his runners — on a diet of 50-mile, 6-day weeks, mostly at easy, conversational paces, with a lot of hills and little speedwork.

He was, in short, the running opposite of Bush, who, as an athlete, did everything at the highest possible intensity – speed golf, brutal trail biking and all-out runs. In July, Bush would take all comers — and pull 7-minute miles in the high Texas heat. Even the Secret Service guys were gassed out by this. But from what I can tell, the former president loved it.

“He wants to see what you’re made of,” is how one senior staffer who had been through the crucible put it.

Those two running philosophies – Broderick’s “go easy and finish comfortably” and the former president’s “go all-out and die trying”—had always been at war with each other in my mind.

For years, the Bush approach had won out.

But I gradually started to heed Broderick’s better angels approach. I found myself holding back in races in the first few miles, focusing less on “banking time” than on finding a steady cadence. My mid-week runs took on more purpose. No more cowboy stuff.